Boldog új évet!

I seem to be a few days behind in wishing my readers a happy new year! I cannot claim that I was too busy. For the first time in nine years I acutally have a semester break that is longer than a couple of weeks. I've been working on lesson plans and designing games to play for my courses. I found a website the makes jigsaw puzzles from photographs and created a puzzle for the first day of my games class which starts in February: Game Design Puzzle*   I've also been designing games and activities for my classes at the high school where I begin teaching on Friday.  

The weather has been spring like for the last few days. For Szeged, that means that the temperature has been in the 60s (around 15 Celcius), but it wasn't like that after Christmas. Last Monday and Tuesday,  we were under a red alert, watching for an ice storm. I didn't have to be anywhere on Monday, so I was content to stay home and watch the snowfall outside my window.  On Tuesday, I ventured out and took pictures while walking to the supermarket. It was getting warm enough that the ice was falling from the powerlines. Fortunately, none of it fell on me. 

On Friday, I went to church. We had a special program.  In the morning, I had received a message with more details about the program: prayer, worship, sermon, potluck, worship, prayer, games, potluck, worship, prayer at midnight, and more games. Until the email, I had not thought about eating at church, so I had to think about what to fix to take with me. I had bought some potatoes,  vegetables, and fruit the day before since I know that all the grocery stores would be closed. I had also bought some ingredients to make a second batch of fudge since I had experimented with them the day before and been successful. I thought about making some deviled eggs, but I only had four eggs and one was dubious. I made potato salad with the three good eggs and carried that and the fudge with me. I brought the potato salad back home, but the fudge was consumed. There were no black-eyed peas, but I haven't seen any in any of the grocery stores. The Hungarian food for the new year is a corn salad. There were also some meat appetizers, breads, and cakes that graced the table, including the Christmas poppyseed cake that the high school students had recommended I try.

The celebration was fun. Families with children left about 9 o' clock as did some of the adults.  A dozen of us, mostly college students, stayed to pray and play games. We sang worship songs after the midnight prayer. I left at 12:30 because I was expecting guests. The others stayed until nearly 6. 

On Saturday, it was absolutely beautiful. I wore a windbreaker and was quite comfortable on my walk around the city.  An Indonesian friend who is studying in Hungary came with a couple of Indonesian students that she met where she studies. Everything was closed, including most of the restaurants, so we mainly saw the outside of everytning, stopping to pose for pictures along the way. One of the travelers knew some Indonesians students in Szeged, so after we had tea and fruit at my house and stopped to take pictures in front of the synagogue, we went to the apartment of some Indonesian students, where my friend stir-fried some spicy vegetables to go with the rice that the Indonesian hosts served them. 

January 5. 

The last few days have been relaxing. I've developed more materials for teahing, done some shopping, and visited. Yesterday and this afternooon, I went to the high school to observe the 11th and 12th grade English classes that I will teach on Friday. To date, it seems that a couple of people have read my post about shadowing the 9th and 10th grade English  teachers before Christmas. The teachers have been very helpful and gracious toward me, allowing me to observe their classes and collaborating with me about how we can complement each other in helping the students master the English language.  The students in the classes that I will be teaching are quite impressive. The class was entirely in English and the students did not seem to struggle with that at all. 

As you may have surmised, 2022 is off to a promising start! Boldog új évet!